Science for All of Us

Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times dated June 1, 2008 entitled "Put a Little Science in Your Life." His book is the other side of the coin when it comes to string theory - you might remember my post about Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics. (When I wrote the post, I didn't know about Greene's book.) Greene does not deny no experiment can currently be done to validate the theory, but is very excited about it, and yes, that includes the many more dimensions to space than what we can see. I haven't finished the book yet; however, I've been struck with the clarity of Greene's explanations when he tackles complex topics such as special relativity. He stays away from equations, but conveys the essence of the key concepts with ease. As I mentioned in that April 2008 post, I'm not too much of a physics person, and this might be in part because my physics teachers, although they seemed to know what they were talking about, lacked any kind of enthusiasm when they taught. I could never figure out why all the equations mattered, when to apply what, and so on. Authors like Greene (and Smolin) make physics engaging for the general public because they stay away from the technical stuff.

In his op-ed, Greene makes the excellent point that "science (and the technology to which it leads) is woven into the fabric of our day-to-day activities" and that "when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon [including stem cells, genomic sequencing, nanoscience, quantum computers] we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues." Greene then indulges in a bout of lyricism about science as "a way of life", before returning to the problem at hand: "science is still widely viewed as merely a subject one studies in the classroom or an isolated body of largely esoteric knowledge" (followed by more lyricism on science as "a language of hope and inspiration".) While the lyrical parts will distract the reader by making him either chuckle or shake his hand in disbelief, it is true that the general public is not adequately prepared to take an informed stand on the issues mentioned above. Because they pertain to technology as much as science, it is possible that the proliferation of "minors in engineering" offered at colleges and universities (Iowa State, Carnegie-Mellon, Dartmouth, Lehigh, to name a few) will at least begin to address this problem. But students have to be aware of the importance of such an education in the first place, and go beyond their usual fear of math to enroll in the program. I wonder what would happen if, before (not instead of!) teaching science from the usual textbooks, high school instructors spent one semester teaching physics or biology off mass-market vulgarization paperbacks. This way, even if students later had poor science teachers, that wouldn't color their whole view of the discipline - they would still remember that first semester when they were introduced to science and it all sounded so simple.

Comments

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Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" is a wonderful book. There's also a documentary with the same name and hosted by Brian Greene himself: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant

The documentary is simply excellent. It's divided in three parts, each 1-hour long. The first time I watched it, I planned to watch the first 30 minutes, and I could not stop until I watched the whole thing. It's THAT good.